Vera Stein Erlich

(1897-1980)

ERLICH, VERA STEIN (1897–1980), Yugoslav social-cultural anthropologist and psychologist. Vera Erlich devoted many years to the study of family relationships in rural areas. She managed to save her material on the eve of World War II, and it eventually formed the basis of her book Porodica u transformaciji (1964; Family in Transition: A study of 300 Yugoslav villages, 1966). From 1945 to 1950 Vera Erlich was a United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) psychiatric social worker with displaced persons in Italy. She then went to the United States, and for ten years acted as lecturer in Slavic languages and literature and a research fellow in anthropology at Berkeley University. In 1960 she returned to Yugoslavia and became a professor in anthropology at the University of Zagreb. Her published works include Savremeno dijete ("The Contemporary Child," 1936) and U društvu sa čovekom ("In the Company of Man," 1968). In her capacity of professional consultant, she was helpful to the operations of UNRRA (the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) and the IRO.

She was married to Dr. Benno Stein, a noted psychologist of Zagreb, murdered in the Jasenovac death camp.